This is the story of how a group of dedicated but frustrated affordable housing advocates learned to tell their story so it reflected their values and the values that resonated with policy makers. What they thought would be a simple refresher course in working with the media transformed their own understanding of affordable housing, how to talk about it, and, ultimately, what was done about it.
Framing battles in public health illustrate the tension in our society between individual freedom and collective responsibility. This article describes how two frames, market justice and social justice, first articulated in a public health context by Dan Beauchamp, influence public dialogue on the health consequences of corporate practices. It also offers lessons for health education practitioners who need to frame public health issues in contentious and controversial policy contexts.
Childhood overweight and physical inactivity have reached epidemic levels in the United States, and they are taking a terrible toll on health. This memo explores the prevalence of the problem, its causes and implications, and some of the issues that are blocking the development of a strong consumer-based movement aimed at prevention.
Battered women’s advocates and feminist scholars have long complained about how intimate partner violence appears in the news. But because the evidence has been anecdotal, the extent that U.S. news media downplay violence against women has been difficult to gauge. Do most news stories blame the victim? Do they mitigate the perpetrator? Overall, how is intimate partner violence depicted in newspapers? We decided to find out by examining a year’s worth of articles in two major newspapers.
The term “values” often acts as political shorthand, usually for the political agenda of social conservatives. Yet values systems are crucial to any political culture. How competing American value systems of individualism and what we call interconnection are represented in news stories will influence readers’ interpretations of the stories. The news about children’s health provides a useful lens for analyzing American values in the news since both conservative and progressive voices claim to “leave no child behind.”
In an information economy dependent on education, child care brims with news value. But an analysis of national news on child care shows that is far from the case. Issue 11 compares every story about child care published on the business pages of 11 newspapers in 1999 and 2000 to child care stories in other parts of the same newspapers to see not only how frequent coverage is, but also how the stories are framed and who gets quoted the most within them.
In the week following the Columbine shootings, news reporting was so ubiquitous that it frightened students, teachers, and parents coast-to-coast — even though schools are one of the safest places for children to be. This Issue measures how reporting about more proximate and probable threats to California young people compares with coverage of dangers rare and remote.
Youth Radio is dedicated to bringing the voices of youth to young and adult audiences. This is a story of young people using radio to create their own representations as a mechanism for violence prevention.
The leading environmental threat to children’s health is lead poisoning. This Issue assesses the claims made by various sides of the issue during 1993 and 1994 in the nation’s major newspapers.
In the late 1990’s, children’s health began to receive more attention in the news media. But was the coverage meaningful? In this Issue, we find out by examining three months of coverage from newspapers and National Public Radio.
